How to use the Facebook pixel and install it in 2021 [GUIDE]

Of all the amazing tools Facebook has created for marketers, perhaps the most useful is the Facebook Pixel.

The truth is, any business or e-commerce site that does advertising campaigns with Facebook should definitely install the pixel.

Pixels are fairly common tools found on most major advertising platforms. They are used to set a cookie which will have the function of tracking visitors to your website so that you can offer them relevant advertising later. This is called sequential retargeting. Once you advertise to past visitors to your website, the Facebook pixel can also be used to track their behavior when they return.

We will see in this article all the following parts:

1-What is facebook pixel?

The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that helps you measure the effectiveness of your Facebook advertising campaigns by monitoring the actions people take on your website.

The Facebook pixel is a piece of code that tracks these types of events:

  • Seen pages
  • Add to the basket
  • Purchase
  • Scroll depth
  • Visit time on a page
  • Etc.

The Facebook pixel can help you optimize your ads and ensure they are served to the right audience. You can also use the pixel to improve your Facebook retargeting and remarketing to people who have visited a specific page or taken a desired action on your website.

You can create up to 100 pixels in your Business Manager account.

In short, the Facebook pixel allows you to better understand the impact of your ads by understanding what people are doing after seeing them. This can help you reach people who are more likely to take meaningful action, such as purchasing a product.

2-How to create facebook pixel?

Each pixel has its own 15-digit ID, which you’ll need to install on every page you want to track on your website.

There are two ways to generate your unique code: through Ads Manager and through Business Manager.

Method 1: Via Ads Manager, the ad manager

Once you’ve accessed Ads Manager, click on the drop-down menu in the upper left corner, then click on the “All Tools” tab, located at the very bottom of the available options.

Then select “Pixels”.

When you click on “Create Pixel”, all you have to do is name the pixel to create it permanently.

Method 2: via Business Manager

In Business Manager, go to the “pixel” section in the menu on the left and create a new pixel.

As with the previous option (Ads Manager) give your pixel a name.

Finally, you’ll want to assign the pixel to certain ad accounts so that it can be used in your ad campaigns.

Once you have applied any of these methods, you just need to decide how you want to install your pixel.

3- How to install the Facebook pixel on your website

The current Facebook pixel works the same as the old custom audience pixel. It must be in the main section of your index page for it to appear on every page of your website. No matter what page loads, the pixel will fire and start following your visitors all over the site.

There are three ways to add the Facebook pixel to your website:

  1. Install the code manually
  2. Email a Developer Instructions
  3. Use a partner integration or tag manager

1- Install the code manually

Manual installation is the most common way to install Facebook tracking pixel. When you are on the “Pixel” page in the “Ads Manager” section you will see the option “Finish configuring the pixel” if it is not yet installed. Click on it.

You will then see three different options displayed. Choose “Install manually”.

On the next screen, you will see a large frame containing about ten lines of code, in the form of text. It’s your pixel. Copy it.

You’ll need to install it in the header of every page on your site that you want to track.

You therefore need to access the code of each page of your website. And all that remains is to paste the code of your pixel in the header, at the following location: “insert_pixel_code_here”.

And there you have it, your pixel is well installed.

2- Ask a developer to install the Facebook Pixel code on your website

If you have a web developer running your site, you can also email them the code and instructions for installing the Facebook pixel. You can do this by selecting the option “Email the instructions to a developer”, and you just need to enter their email address.

Once your developer has assured you that the code is installed correctly, you can use “Facebook Pixel Helper” to verify for yourself that it is working correctly.

Once you’ve verified that it’s working, you’re ready to head back to Ads Manager and start building your own Custom Audiences and Custom Conversions to kick off your optimized Facebook ad campaigns. With enough time and supervision, you can quickly start to resize your Facebook ad campaigns and gain efficiency and performance.

3- Use a partner integration to add the Facebook code

Regarding partner integrations through which you can also install your Facebook pixel, let’s mention WordPress , Prestashop, Magento, WooCommerce, Hubspot, Google Tag Manager or even Shopify.

Let’s take a look at the pixel installation cases with Google Tag Manager and Shopify:

If you choose to use Google Tag Manager, you will need to create a tag first. Give your tag a name like “Facebook Pixel – Base Code”.

Use the custom HTML tag type and paste your basic pixel code.

Then, in the “trigger / triggering” section, under your tag, edit and select the “All pages” page display trigger.

Finally, all you have to do is save your new tag and validate your changes.

If your e-store is on Shopify, the process is also simple:
  1. In your Shopify admin interface , click on Facebook in the “Sales Channels” section.
  2. Then click on “Settings”, then “Data sharing settings”.
  3. In the “Customer data sharing” section, click the “Enable data sharing” button.
  4. In the “Choose the level of data sharing” section, select “Standard”, “Enhanced” or “Maximum”.

Select your pixel from the list. Or if you haven’t created a pixel yet, follow the instructions to create one.

Before clicking “Confirm”, check the connection to see if your pixel is working in sending test traffic to your site, and after that you are done!

Now that you’ve figured out how to create and install the Facebook pixel, let’s take a look at how it works.

4- How does the Facebook pixel work?

Prior to 2015, Facebook already had a custom audience pixel to retarget website visitors and conversion pixels to track conversions such as sales. Although each ad account could only have one custom audience pixel, you could create multiple conversion pixels, one for each web page you want to track conversions on.

In 2015, Facebook simplified this process by introducing a new single Facebook pixel to replace the old ones, making it the only tracking pixel you need now. The Facebook pixel was updated again in 2017 to make it easier and more efficient to advertise on the platform.

The Facebook pixel works in six steps:

  • Install the Pixel: It all starts with adding a snippet of tracking code to your website.
  • Gather information / insights: You will start to receive information about site visitors, such as where the traffic is coming from, what type of device they are using, and other demographic information.
  • Review Visitor Behaviors: See how people are acting on your website, whether they’re crawling a specific product page or adding an item to their cart.
  • Create Audiences: Use the data collected from the events designated by the pixel to create Facebook Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, and ads tailored to those specific audiences.
  • Optimize your bids: Take advantage of the cheapest bidding strategy to reach people who are likely to take the desired action (for example, buy a product) to effectively spend your budget.
  • Analyze Events: Evaluate conversion events to decide the best Facebook advertising strategy for your business.

5- How to use the Facebook pixel

The Facebook pixel offers five basic functions to help you get a better return on your investment:

  1. Custom audiences for your website
  2. Custom conversions
  3. Standard and personalized events
  4. Dynamic ads
  5. Optimization of conversions

1. Custom audiences for your website

Your website’s Custom Audiences are sort of how Facebook helps you retarget the traffic coming and going to your website. If you have installed the Facebook pixel, it will track the movements of all visitors to your website who are simultaneously logged into Facebook.

The pixel has the ability to track the following activities:

  • What pages are visited by a user
  • Which pages are not
  • Scroll depth
  • Time spent on the page
  • Etc.

Using this data, you can advertise to highly targeted groups of people. You can also use this data to create similar audiences and reach customers who are likely to buy your products. It is also relevant to exclude specific groups, so as not to continue targeting users who may have already made a conversion or who are not very engaged.

To be clear, when you are advertising on Facebook, you can’t just pick one of your specific visitors and advertise them. On the other hand, you can broadcast advertising to groups of users (Custom Audiences / Custom Audiences of your website) based on shared behaviors, as in the following examples:

  • Users who visited your website in the last 24 hours
  • Users who visited your website in the last 180 days, but haven’t returned for 30 days
  • Users who visited a specific landing page on your website

You can define personalized audiences according to the pages that Internet users have visited or not, and also according to when they visited your site. It is possible to choose a period between one and 180 days.

Audiences are created independently of ads. Once an audience is created, you can choose when to expose them to your ads, and which ads to specifically use.

2. Custom conversions

One of the coolest features of the Facebook pixel is the ability to create personalized conversions, similar to how you create personalized audiences. A custom conversion is created by selecting a completion page, and naming the conversion type. Usually, the completion page consists of some sort of thank you page, where you will display messages similar to these:

  • Thank you for your purchase. Your order is on its way.
  • Thank you for subscribing. You will soon receive your first e-mail from us.
  • Thank you for your comment. Here is your free download.

This means you can create personalized conversions independent of your Facebook ads and then choose when to use them in the future.

Since the tracking pixel fires on every page of your website, it can easily track when someone visits a completion page, especially if those are users who clicked on your Facebook ads.

You can also add monetary value in this category. For example, if you create a custom conversion that tracks visitors to an ebook download page, you might include the cost of the ebook. This feature will help you determine if your advertising campaigns are profitable. If you charge $ 20 for your eBook, but spend $ 21 for every purchase from Facebook ads, you might want to revisit your copy for that particular campaign.

Here are some of the custom conversion categories that Facebook offers you:

  • Add payment information
  • Add to Cart
  • Add to wishlist
  • Start payment
  • Lead
  • Purchase
  • Research
  • Show content

All of your personalized conversions are always tracked. At any time, you can create a report for any of your Facebook ads that will show the conversion rate for one of your personalized conversions.

You’re limited to 100 personalized conversions per ad account, and you can delete any you want at any time.

3. Standard and custom events

When someone performs an action on your site, the Facebook pixel logs it as an event. You can use the pixel to track two different types of events:

  1. A standard event or predefined actions that Facebook recognizes through advertising products.
  2. Custom events, or an event not recognized by Facebook, to which you are going to give a name.
  3. Standard Facebook Pixel Events

There are 17 standard Pixel events integrated by Facebook, which you can use by copying and pasting a simple event code:

  • Add payment information: to add payment information during checkout.
  • Add to cart: to add an item to a cart.
  • Add to wishlist: to add an item to a wishlist.
  • Complete your registration: to register for an event or an email subscription.
  • Contact: to get in touch with your company.
  • Personalize the product: to personalize a product on your website, such as choosing a color.
  • Make a donation: to allow a visitor to make a donation to your business.
  • Find a location: to help users find the location of your physical store, if applicable.
  • Start payment: to start the payment process by clicking on a payment button.
  • Lead: To allow a visitor to identify themselves as a lead on your website, for example by submitting a form or starting a product or service trial.
  • Purchase: When a visitor completes a purchase and lands on a landing page or confirmation page that contains a thank you message.
  • Schedule an appointment: to make an appointment with your company.
  • Search: to search for something on your website or app.
  • Start Trial: To begin testing a product or service you offer.
  • Submit a request: to submit a request for a product, service or program.
  • Subscribe: to subscribe to a paid product or service.
  • Show Content: When a visitor visits a landing page or product that you specified.

Standard events also support parameters that allow you to include additional information for an event:

  • Product Identifiers (ID)
  • Categories
  • Number of products purchased
  • Content type
  • Conversion value

Custom events

While personalized conversions are linked to a URL on your site (usually for some sort of thank you or completion page), personalized events don’t have to be. Instead, custom events can be tracked by adding an additional code snippet to the page of interest.

Custom events are commonly used to collect more data than what standard events are able to provide.

Dynamic ads

If you run an e-commerce site, you can use the Facebook pixel to serve “dynamic” ads. These types of ads, also known as “catalog sales / catalog sales” in your ad account, automatically display the products in your catalog based on your target audience.

If your business has thousands of products, creating individual ads based on specific pages visited and actions taken by visitors is a strategy that is bound to be ineffective. Instead, you can create dynamic ad templates to make the ads served to a potential customer correlate with their behavior.

Take the example of 9Five, an American luxury eyewear retailer that wanted to increase sales globally and reach new customers.

To achieve this, they used the data collected from the Facebook pixel to create a personalized audience of visitors who viewed at least one product on their e-commerce website, but did not purchase anything. They then targeted that specific audience with dynamic ads featuring images of the products that each person had seen.

These dynamic ads included advertising texts that changed depending on the different countries and promotions concerned.

Thanks to this campaign, 9Five achieved the following results, thanks to the Facebook pixel:

  • 40% lower cost per acquisition
  • 2 times the return on investment for their advertising spend

Conversion optimization

If you don’t use standard events or custom conversions to track what’s happening on your website, you can’t optimize conversions. You can try to optimize your strategy to improve traffic results, link clicks, or video views, but that doesn’t always mean more sales.

When you install the pixel, Facebook knows what a conversion means for your business and will target ads to the people most likely to convert.

Finally, don’t forget to enable Advanced Matching for your pixel. It’s turned off by default and surprisingly a lot of advertisers don’t use it. But it is fortunately possible to activate it in less than a second, by simply clicking on “Advanced Automatic Correspondence”, in the “Details” section, at the top right of your screen, in “Business Manager Settings” ˃ “Settings and Related Assets ”.

Advanced Auto-Match allows Facebook to retrieve user-submitted data from your website (such as email addresses and phone numbers) to provide you with more accurate matches and larger personalized audiences for your business. retargeting action.

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